Even though Panini fucked up the release in a BIG way last year, 2014 National Treasures was the best of the entire brand’s run, in my opinion. Massive problems with collation prevented Teddy Bridgewater and Odell Beckham rookie cards from surfacing in a regular way, but most of the set was actually pretty solid. Not only were there a lot of hard signed stuff, but there was also a lot of good looking cards. It still had a lot of stickers, and some really, really ugly posed photo garbage, but it was the nicest it has been in a long time.

Here are some of the nicer cards of last year’s set:

2014 National Treasures Teddy Bridgewater Auto Rookie Patch /25

2014 National Treasures Derek Carr Colossal Relic Auto

2014 National Treasures Drew Brees Notable Nicknames Inscription Auto

2014 National Treasures Blake Bortles Booklet Jumbo Patch Auto

Sadly, after seeing the preview for this year’s set, I dont think they are going to be able to replicate the success of design and look from last year. Despite the fact that the 2015 class has cooled considerably, the designs and photographs used in this year’s set just fucking baffle me. Not only have they chosen to go with more posed photographs than I have seen in any previous year, but the designs are just plain awful, boring or dumb.

Here is the thing. Posed photographs in football are terrible in every way – especially considering that action shots owned by the company are readily available. Topps has all but cut them out of their football product lines, and for good reason. They arent dynamic, the players are usually not photogenic, and action shots make for better looking trading cards. For whatever reason, Panini has made a conscious choice to use them OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, and I will argue that it hurts more than they think.

Treasures as a whole, lacks a lot of what we see in past products like Exquisite, Five Star, and even Panini’s own Flawless brand. Mainly that sticker autographs, and cheap relics are all over the place. If you go back to 2006 and 2007, when competition was high thanks to a licensed hard signed Exquisite product, Treasures was still a full sticker set. Now that more on card content exists in the checklist, things are considerably better, but I fail to understand how collectors continue to assign such extreme value to a set whose quality and design shouldnt have earned that respect. I just dont get it. Upper Deck had this figured out almost 10 years ago.

This year’s set looks to be a bit more focused on obtaining hard signed autographs, but it almost doesnt matter with designs built the way they are. Goofy layouts, jumbo patches on vertical autograph cards, and yes, TONS of posed photos.

I had high hopes for this set after last year, and now all of those are dashed. With every preview, I continue to wonder how these people will ever be able to sustain the sport with their exclusive starting next year.

Here is the damage: